Top 3 Ways to Support a Healthy Organizational Culture at Your Sober Living Home

Though they are places of residence first a foremost, sober living homes are also organizations, workplaces and therapeutic environments. As with any organization, sober living homes can easily breed toxic cultures where indirect communication, fear, intimidation, coercion, blame and high drama thrive. 

It is often said that when you fail to consciously plan and attend to your organizational culture, you invite bad actors to prioritize personal power over organizational values. This erosion can happen slowly over time and it can be a difficult problem to fix once it’s taken root. 

The solution? 

Proactively plan for a healthy organizational culture before a toxic environment can ever develop.

Today at the Sober Living App blog, we’ll look at 5 things all sober living home operators can do to proactively support a healthy organizational culture at their sober living homes.  

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #1: Post the Philosophy and Rules of Your Sober Living Home in a Prominent Place 

Because addiction cannot peacefully co-exist with healthy relationships, people in recovery often need coaching around how to create, maintain and respect healthy interpersonal boundaries. It takes time and practice to unlearn the toxic relationship patterns and behaviors that people with SUD practiced when they were using. 

One of the ways this manifests in sober living homes is a lot of boundary-testing around rules. Residents may break or bend rules to see how strictly and consistently they are enforced. Residents may attempt to “split” authority figures from one another to undermine a “united front” on rules. This, in turn, can result in a conflict between managers or other standard-bearing figures within your sober living home’s orbit. 

Don’t let this happen.

Clearly post the philosophy and house rules of your sober living home in a prominent place (like the living room) so that there is full transparency on what is and is not allowed. This consistency actually invites a sense of safety and stability into the sober living home environment and encourages a deepening of residents’ recovery.

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #2: Don’t Hire Friends, Sponsors or Sponsees at your Sober Living Home 

This is very controversial in the addiction treatment and recovery communities, but we humbly suggest that you reconsider hiring friends, sponsors and sponsees to manage your sober living home. These types of arrangements are sometimes called “dual relationships” and they can quickly and easily lead to trouble. It is difficult to maintain the proper professionalism and objective distance that a healthy working relationship requires when you are also personally “friendly” with your employee, especially if that friendship pre-dates the working relationship. 

Not only are these relationships difficult to manage themselves, they can also wreak havoc on your other working relationships within the organization. It will be easy for others to view your relationship as “favoritism” and “bias” and this will haunt you in future conflicts outside of the immediate dual relationship, as well. 

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #3: Model Healthy Conflict Resolution at Your Sober Living Home

People in recovery frequently struggle with healthy conflict resolution skills. Direct communication and assertiveness can feel threatening and foreign to those who are not accustomed to respecting and maintaining healthy boundaries. 

The fix?

Model healthy conflict resolution skills at your sober living home. Train all management and residents in healthy communication (like Non-Violent Communication or NVC) and create space for a formal conflict resolution process at your sober living home should anyone request it or require it. Put down in writing what a formal conflict resolution process entails and require all residents to agree to submit to such a process, if needed, in writing. There are many models of these types of processes online for free. Simply choose the one that most resonates with your sober living home’s mission and values and make sure to include those details in your new resident agreement. Make additional copies or a poster detailing the process accessible in a common area. 

We’re Here to Help Your Sober Living Home Create a Healthy Organizational Culture

At Sober Living App, we’re passionate about helping sober living homes across the country operate smarter. 

Running a sober living home can be a huge hassle, but it doesn’t have to be. 

We’ve distilled all the chaos that can easily overwhelm sober living home operators into a simple app that “thinks” about all the little details that go into running your sober living home 24/7 so you don’t have to. 

Claim your free, no-strings free trial today and see the Sober Living App difference for yourself. 

Sober Living App's New Billing Assistant Makes Getting Paid Even Easier

It’s probably safe to say that collecting payments at your sober living home isn’t your favorite part of the job. Few people get into sober living home management for the pleasure of collecting rent. 

But every month, COVID-19 or no, it needs to be done. 

At Sober Living App, we’re excited to announce some new tools we’ve added to our Summer 2020 update that are designed to make getting paid as easy as possible - every time.

Sober Living Homes Often Collect Payments in a Disorganized Way

Many sober living homes collect rent haphazardly. Your sober living home manager might set up a box to collect checks, maintaining a spreadsheet to track who’s paid and who still needs to chip in. That’s sober living home bill collection at its most basic.

The pitfalls in this system are obvious:

• It takes a lot of time to personally remind residents of the payment due date 

• More time is wasted on reminding late payers to settle their accounts 

• It’s logistically complicated for multiple payers to chip in on a single account 

• It’s easy to lose track of who’s paid and who hasn’t

• Physical checks and cash are time consuming to process  

There’s a better way.

Here’s The Changes We’ve Made to the Make Sober Living Home Billing Easier 

At Sober Living App, we’ve always made it easy for sober living homes to collect payments online. Residents have always been able to view bills and make payments on their phone using the resident portal. Our easy cloud-based application allows new residents to make move-in payments as they are completing the intake paperwork on their phone. 

It was a good start. 

But for our 2020 Summer Update, we’ve made a few key changes to really kick your billing efforts into high gear. 

Read on to learn more about how these tools and features will help keep your sober living home profitable with less time and effort. 

Our Click Through Services Book Make it a Snap to Collect Sober Living Home Rent 

Our new Services Book makes it easy to create a prefab “menu” of services your sober living home offers with built-in pricing. Simply choose the service, the date and the resident and the bill completes itself. 

Write a title and description of the service, along with the price, and set the billing cycle as monthly, bi-monthly, weekly or daily. You can assign the service to a particular property, as well. 

For example, if you offer weekly massages at two different properties at two different price points, you can easily set that up in the services book in order to avoid confusion and ensure consistent pricing within each property. We take care of the rest.

Easy Automated Repeating Charges Take the Pressure Off Your Sober Living Home Manager 

If you run a sober living home, then you have repeating charges. Rent, storage space, amenities: these all take place on a repeating basis. 

Our automated repeating charges feature make payment collection truly “set and forget.” Sit back and watch our repeating charges feature generate bills (and send reminders!) at whatever frequency works for your sober living home. It’s that easy.  

Our Updated Billing Assistant Gives Your Sober Living Home the Ability to Seamlessly Collect from Multiple Payers 

It’s so common for sober living home residents to rely on relatives or friends to help with their monthly expenses. Our Billing Assistant makes it easy for anyone to help out your residents with their financial obligations - anywhere, anytime, all from the convenience of their phone.

Now Your Sober Living Home Can Collect Even More Payment Methods

All major credit cards? Of course. 

Cash, bank account, money order? Check. 

Paypal? Check. 

What about Cash App, Venmo and Zelle? You bet. 

We’ve expanded our collection of payment methods to reflect the ways sober living home residents want to pay their bills today. Why put up extra hurdles for your residents when you can make it easy for them to pay their bills using the payment method they feel most comfortable with? 

Happy residents means a healthier, happier sober living home environment for them - and you!

We’re Here to Help Your Sober Living Home Succeed 

Think these new tools might help your sober living home run more smoothly with less effort? 

Curious to learn more? 

Reach out to us to claim your free trial to see the Sober Living App difference today. 

5 Things All of the Best Sober Living Home Managers Have in Common

Finding a good sober living home manager is probably the most important ingredient to a successful sober living home business. Sure, the right building is important and good residents are key but if you flub up on selecting your manager, your sober living home is definitely headed for disaster.

Being a sober living home manager is a tough job. It takes a rare combination of empathy, tough love, and common sense to pull it off well. When you’re interviewing for potential sober living home managers, you’ll want to look for certain qualities in your candidates. Some sober living home manager skills can be taught but many of them—like the oh so important soft skills that play a large part in the role— are harder to learn on the job. 

Today, let’s look at the top 5 things all of the best sober living home managers have in common.

Good Sober Living Home Managers Are Organized

Ask any domestic engineer: running a home is a complicated matter. There are a ton of details to track and they change constantly. Anyone who struggles with keeping the toilet paper stocked up in their house can relate to how easy it is for the details of domestic functionality to get lost in the shuffle. 

Add to that the dividing and assigning chores to residents, tracking resident payments, managing group activities, scheduling drug testing, arranging for home maintenance work, maintaining residence vehicles, and everything else that goes into running a sober living home smoothly and you have quite the “to do” list to contend with.

Good sober living home managers are organized. They have systems (like the Sober Living App, perhaps?) to keep track of everything that needs to be done. Automated reminders and easy-to-use templates make the workflow easier to manage.  

Good Sober Living Home Managers are Consistent

A good sober living home manager is also a rule enforcer. Residents in recovery need structure to relearn sober living so they can thrive in their new lifestyle without drugs and alcohol. Sober living home rules help provide that structure in early recovery.

When it comes to rule enforcement, it is so important that your sober living home manager draws firm and consistent boundaries with residents. If residents perceive that your sober living home manager treats them unfairly, it is very easy for the home to devolve into chaos. 

A good sober living home manager will treat all residents equally and create systems that are built on fairness. They adhere to the rulebook at all times and don’t make exceptions lightly. They will not hesitate to enforce rules, especially when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Good Sober Living Home Managers are Proactive

The best sober living home managers are proactive, meaning thy anticipate problems and deal with them before they become crises. This includes everything from interpersonal conflicts to leaky pipes. 

A good sober living home manager is observant of their surroundings and is always looking for ways to improve what’s around them. They know that early intervention is the key to a well functioning home. 

Good Sober Living Home Managers are Awesome Communicators 

The best sober living home managers are top tier communicators. Their “people skills” come in handy when managing residents, sure, but they are also important when negotiating home repairs, dealing with prospective residents, and communicating with you, the owner. 

Find a sober living home manager who is responsive to your texts, calls and/or emails. It should be easy to get clear, concise information from your sober living home manager. A good sober living home manager loves to talk through problems and solutions. They value direct, open, and honest communication.

Good Sober Living Home Managers Document Everything

There is a lot to document at a sober living home: behavioral incidents, damage reports, rent payments, drug testing results, chores. A good sober living home manager doesn’t shy away from documentation, in fact, their motto is, “when in doubt, document.” Strong documentation not only helps with smooth day-to-day operations and easy bookkeeping, but it also helps coordinate care between managers and other players in the residents’ care team. Moreover, excellent documentation acts as a kind of insurance against liability claims or other potential disputes with residents, community members, or even maintenance workers. A good sober living home manager will never have to resort to “he said, she said” debates because they’ll have access to written documentation about most incidents. 

Every Good Sober Living Home Manager Needs the Right Tools to Get the Job Done

At BehaveHealth, we created the Sober Living App to help sober living home managers save their organizations time and money. Designed especially for the recovery industry, the Sober Living App eliminates paper record keeping and puts everything sober living home managers need at their fingertips at all times. 

From bed management to resident records to maintenance tasks, the Sober Living App automates the management of sober living homes in a frustration-free, intuitive format so that your staff can focus on providing excellent service to residents. 

Why not claim your free trial of the Sober Living App today?